EXPERIMENTAL LEGISLATION. 763 



I maintain that, if our legislators are to act rationally, they -will as 

 far as possible imitate the agricultural chemist. The idea, for instance, 

 of obliging, or even allowing, all the boroughs in the kingdom simulta- 

 neously to adopt the Gothenburg plan, Avould be ridiculous and irra- 

 tional. The cost and confusion which would arise from a sudden 

 general trial must be very great ; many years would elapse before the 

 result was apparent. And that result would not be so clear as if the 

 trial were restricted to some half a dozen towns. In the mean time it 

 would be far better that other boroughs should be trying other experi- 

 ments, giving us many strings to our bow, while some towns would 

 actually do best for the country by going on as nearly as possible in 

 their present course. Specific and differentiated experience is what we 

 need, before making any further important change in the drink-trade. 



Not only is this the rational method of procedure, but it is practi- 

 cally the method to which we owe all the more successful legislative 

 and administrative reforms of later years. Consider the Poor Law 

 question. During the eighteenth century, Parliament made two or 

 three leaps in the dark, by enacting laws such as Gilbert's Act, and 

 very nearly ruined the kingdom by them. The great Poor Law Com- 

 mission commenced its operations in the soundest way by collecting 

 all available information about the treatment of the poor, whether at 

 home or abroad. But, what is more to the point, since the new Poor 

 Law was passed in 1834, the j^artially free action of Boards of Guar- 

 dians, under the supervision of the Poor Law Commission and the Poor 

 Law Board, has afforded a long series of experimental results. The 

 reports of Mr. Edwin Chadwick and the late Sh- George Shaw Lefevre 

 are probably the best models of the true process of administrative 

 reform to be anywhere found. In more recent years several very im- 

 portant experiments have been tried by different Boards of Guardians, 

 such as the boarding out of pauper children, the suppression of va- 

 grancy by the provision of separate vagrant cells and the hard-labor 

 test, and the cutting down of outdoor relief. If the total abolition of 

 outdoor relief is ever to be tried, it must be tried on the small scale 

 first ; it would be a far too severe and dangerous measure to force 

 upon the whole country at a single blow. Much attention has lately 

 been drawn to the so-called "Poor-Law Experiment at Elberfeld," 

 which was carefully described by the Rev. \Y. Walter Edwards, in an 

 article in the "Contemporary Review" for July, 1878, bearing that 

 precise title. 



Even Avhen an act of Parliament is passed in general terms apply- 

 ing to the whole kingdom at once, it by no means follows that it will 

 be equally put into operation everywhere. The discretipn necessarily 

 allowed to magistrates and other authorities often gives ample scope 

 for instructive experiments. Some years since the Howard Associa- 

 tion called attention to what they expressly called " The Luton Experi- 

 ment," consisting in the extraordinary success with which the magis- 



